Introducing: The Panerai Radiomir 1940 Minute Repeater Carillon Tourbillon GMT

Panerai may have its roots in two watches made purely and exclusively for military operations – the Radiomir and Luminor watches – but it has been slowly and steadily expanding both its repertoire of complications, and its design vocabulary, for many years, and in doing so, it's created a far broader identity for itself as well. Radiomir and Luminor may have been intended originally to be pure instrument watches but, as can sometimes happen, purity of intent in the utilitarian produced something of great design integrity aesthetically. For some time now, Panerai has been at least as much of a design oriented as a tool watch oriented manufacturer. This extension of its scope now includes chiming complications, with the introduction of the Radiomir 1940 Minute Repeater Carillon Tourbillon GMT– a dual time, tourbillon, decimal repeater with several features we don't think we've ever seen anywhere else.

First let's talk about the tourbillon. Panerai's first in-house tourbillon movement was the caliber P.2005, introduced in 2007 (along with several other in-house Panerai calibers) and, to this day, I still think it's somewhat under-appreciated. The Panerai tourbillon has some unusual features. First, most tourbillons (in fact, virtually all) rotate in the same plane as the movement plate, while the P.2005 rotates in a plane at right angles to the plate. Second, the tourbillon is placed in the movement at such an angle as to minimize the amount of time the balance spends in any of the positions where variation in rate would be most extreme; the fact that the tourbillon's natural home is in a pocket watch, not a wristwatch, is often raised as an objection to using it in a wristwatch at all but the orientation of the P.2005's carriage does a lot to answer this objection. Finally, its period of rotation is quite fast – it's a 30-second tourbillon, which, again, helps reduce to a minimum the amount of time the balance spends in any of the most extreme positions.  

Typically the way you make a tourbillon more suitable for a wristwatch is to make it a multi-axis tourbillon – done right, this can work well chronometrically, as the performance of Jaeger-LeCoultre's multi-axis tourbillons in the Concours de Chronométrie has demonstrated – but this approach is much more complex and technically difficult (as well as awfully expensive) and as Stephen Forsey of Greubel Forsey once said to me years ago (and it's a comment that's stuck with me), it's always a struggle to gain more than you lose. The P.2005 has a lot of the advantages of a multi-axis tourbillon but is a more robust, simpler construction, much more suitable to a technically oriented company like Panerai, and I've often thought they deserve more credit for producing a tourbillon that's so appropriate to the company's identity.

By far the most unusual aspect of the watch, however, is the chiming system. The Radiomir 1940 Minute Repeater Carillon Tourbillon GMT is one of the class of repeaters known as decimal repeaters. The term refers to any repeater that chimes the hours, then the number of 10-minute intervals past the hour, then the number of minutes past the last 10-minute interval. A conventional repeater, you'll recall, chimes the hours, then the number of quarters past the hour, then the number of minutes past the last quarter hour (up to 14 minutes). All decimal repeaters I know of, basically duplicate the chiming system of a conventional repeater – chiming is on two gongs; and the hours sound on the lower pitched gong, quarters are indicted by a double strike on the higher and lower, and minutes are struck on the higher pitched gong. Decimal repeaters strike the number of 10-minute intervals past the hour on two gongs. The Radiomir 1940 Minute Repeater Carillon Tourbillon GMT is different; it has three gongs, and three hammers. Ten minute intervals are indicated by a triple strike on the intermediate gong.

However, the most interesting feature of the Radiomir 1940 Minute Repeater Carillon Tourbillon GMT is related to the dual time zone function. The watch shows the time in two time zones, but rather amazingly, it can also chime the time in two different time zones – either home time or local time. Such a feat seems incredible, and in fact I don't think anyone has ever created such a chiming system before. Exactly how Panerai's done it we don't know yet in any detail, but I'm very much looking forward to finding out. Minute repeaters work basically by sensing the position of the hands; the gears that drive the hands also drive a rotating system of cams, whose position is sensed by levers that fall onto the cams when the chiming system is activity.

The achievement of on-demand chiming of either home or local time seems daunting but perhaps one clue is that after a little thought, you realize that the only difference in the chiming would be the hour strike. This doesn't make things easy, exactly – as far as I can work it out, you would still need two separate hour snails and two separate hour racks – but it's certainly easier than having two entirely separate striking systems (and I wonder, too, if the three-gong system is actually part of the solution).

This is going to be a very expensive watch, of course. It is not being made as a regular production piece, but neither is it a limited edition per se; Panerai intends to make a wide range of possible customization options available (up to and including an option to select a case metal other than red gold, though red gold is often considered the best alloy for repeaters). The base price, so to speak, is going to be around $395,000, but actual final price will vary, possibly considerably, based on which options the client chooses.

That said, this is an extremely unusual and technically unique watch in many respects – and we really can say unique, unless there is another triple-gong-carillon, dual-time-zone, dual-chime, openworked, offset-angle tourbillon watch out there, which I seriously doubt. In watchmaking you never know for sure of course, but I feel on pretty safe ground with this one. The watch will be available by special order at Panerai boutiques.

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The Radiomir 1940 Minute Repeater Carillon Tourbillon GMT: case, 49 mm, 18k red gold, water resistance 3 bar. Movement, Panerai caliber P.2005/MR; time, GMT, power reserve on the back, decimal repeater on three gongs with three hammers, selectable repetition of the time for either home or local time. 16 1/4 lignes in diameter, 10.35 mm thick, 28,800 vph running in 59 jewels. Four day power reserve, twin barrels.